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Chicas Kaláshnikov y Otras Crónicas – Alejandro Almazán

Alejandro Almazán’s fiction can be cynical and disturbing. His recent novel El Más Buscado (see my earlier review) paints a troubling portrait not only of an elite leader in the drug industry, but also of the Mexico that has allowed him to exist and flourish. Chicas Kaláshnikov y Otras Crónicas, however, is disturbing at an entirely different level, because it’s not fiction. It is a series of interviews with the very real people who populate the Mexican drug trade, stripping away the cliches, horrors and romanticism that have filled our imaginations for many years.

A collection of stories published by Almazán in various publications between 2001 and 2012, the book introduces us to Yaretzi, a young woman now sitting in a Chihuahua jail, who wielded her AK47 cuerno de chivo (the Mexicans call them “goats’ horns”) as a surprisingly underpaid cartel assassin. She doesn’t look at her victims for fear of going crazy. We also meet Jota Erre (J.R.), who has been lured into various low-level jobs for the cartels, ranging from marijuana harvester to debt collector / assassin. At every turn, however, he comes away without getting paid, and what recourse does he have? None… if he wants to stay alive. At another end of the spectrum, we meet Julián Leyzaola Pérez, the one-time chief of police in Tijuana, and celebrated “incorruptible cop.” In a remarkable series of interviews, Almazán records the opinions, insights, and even introspections of a controversial figure widely held to be a hero.

These and other characters are presented so vividly, but without embellishment, that the “war on drugs” now has a face. The face of the real people involved in it.